The Wuhan Mission

by Irving Waters

Xue Lin made the realization that her adoptive parents were probably chipped too. Next time she saw them, she would ask them if they had been vaccinated in China during the adoption process. She was sure that they would have been.

  Sam knocked loudly and entered Jimmy’s room, gesturing to Xue Lin that it was time to go and interview Dr. Wu.

  “See ya Jimmy. Thanks for all your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.” she said and turned and left the room with Sam as Jimmy fondly waved her goodbye.

  Xue Lin calmly entered Dr. Wu’s room carrying the small video camera. Sam wanted her to have a crack at the Doctor alone first. She’d told Sam that Wu had a soft spot for girls and he may be quite vulnerable at the moment because of the very recent death of his daughter. Probably best to keep CIA strangers out of the picture for now.

  “Hi Doctor Wu. You must be exhausted.”

  Dr. Wu was expecting to see Marcus Roet, and relaxed when Xue Lin walked in instead.”

  “I was expecting Marcus Roet.” He said.

  “He’ll be here in under twenty-four hours. I’m very sorry but he will definitely be in to talk to you soon, I guarantee it.”

  “Naturally” he replied.

  She continued: “That was a lot to take in one day. A lot of violence. You’re safe now. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. You’ll be able to stay in America if you cooperate. Just tell the whole story. The reasons behind your work. Most of all, I need to hear about these vials.” She pulled out the three vials, still in their travel cases, and put them on the table in-between them. Xue Lin and Sam had decided to keep the vials with them as no-one was to be trusted.

  “Thank you Xue Lin. I am in your debt for getting me out of China. They would have killed me to make sure that I didn’t talk.”

  Dr. Wu continued to spill almost the entire Chinese plot to threaten and intimidate it’s own population by infecting a whole city with the virus that he had engineered for the Government. He talked about the vaccine that sat on the table in front of her, and the secret ingredients of certain heavy metals that could interact with different radio frequencies in a negative way. He neglected to mention that the SARS-CoV-2 she had placed on the table was actually an infinitely more dangerous virus than the label indicated. The label should have read “SARS-CoV-X”, the name of his mutating virus which may have the ability to roam the world, changing itself over time, making vaccines useless.

  “Xue Lin, if your colleague Sam would like to come in and join us, I would be happy to speak freely with him. He seems to be a nice man, and I trust him.”

  “Great! I’ll go get him. He’s right outside.” Xue Lin got up from her seat, turned and banged on the inside of the door. The guard opened and Xue Lin left the room to call Sam who was down the hall getting coffee from the machine.

  In the corridor Xue Lin urged Sam to hurry up with his coffee.

  “Come on Blue eyes. The Doctor will see you now.”

  Sam rolled his eyes as he stirred his coffee and walked back towards Xue Lin.

  “Let’s do it!” Sam said, opening Dr. Wu’s door and leading the way in.

  “Dr. Wu, I’m sorry you have to be locked in. It’s just the way it has to be.”

  “May I call you Sam?”

  “Please do.”

  “Firstly, I would like to know how my daughter was killed.”

  Sam sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes.

  “I was not there, but I read the report. She was kidnapped near Chinatown by Chinese agents in a van, and was being held in Brooklyn in a warehouse. The FBI went in with a team to save her, but came under intense fire from four Chinese gunmen. The FBI returned fire, and your daughter was caught in the crossfire. I’m very sorry for your loss Doctor Wu. It should never have happened, and our people are being disciplined. They are holding her body at the morgue for you. We can go there soon.”

  Dr. Wu stared back at Sam, believing him. “I am very tired and I would like to rest here for a while. When do you think we can we go and see her?”

  “Maybe the day after tomorrow if all goes well here. We may have more questions.” He replied, looking to Xue Lin.

  Sam continued: “You have told us a great deal but there’s a lot of virology information that will need to be discussed with people who will know what you’re talking about.”

  Sam looked at Dr. Wu, leaving space for him to comment.

  “I would like to see my daughter’s body. I can tell your scientists everything they need to know, but I want to see my daughter first.”

  “Yes, that’s fair” offered Sam.

  Sam’s phone buzzed. “Would you excuse me for a moment please?” and he left the room.

  “Deputy Director?”

  “Sam, something’s come up. It’s not good. I’m sending you a video file.”

  Sam opened the downloaded file on his phone. It was a video of a man and a woman, duct-taped, obviously being held captive. The voiceover had a heavy Chinese accent.

  “We have your Barbecue Couple.

  You have some items that belong to us.

  We would like these things back.

  Bring them to Milan, and we tell you how we make the exchange.”

  Then at the end, someone out of frame held up an Italian newspaper in front of the camera, showing today’s date.

  “This your proof of life. Bring us the vials you took from the lab. See you tomorrow.”

  He turned the newspaper over for the camera, revealing an Italian mobile number.

  “Call us when you get here. Otherwise, maybe chop head off for CNN.”

  Sam touched his screen to bring the Deputy Director back up.

  “Why Milan?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, that is strange. We don’t see the connection at all. Maybe they want the vials in Italy for some reason. We have people working on finding an answer to that question.”

  “So we have to go in, right? Those are the adoptive parents of my operative. Retired CIA officers.” said Sam, continuing: “Maybe take some prisoners of our own while we’re at it?”

  “I agree Sam. We can’t have our CIA statesmen being mistreated by the Chinese. I suggest you get going now. Take the vials in case you need to bait and switch. Hash out some potential plans of action on the plane. I’ll get a team in place in Milan. Maybe you go in heavy, maybe you don’t. Either way, you have to get your ass over there. Decide on a plan once you are on the way. Check in with me before you land. You can take your ‘Snow Forest’. I’m sure she’ll insist anyway.”

  “What about Roet? Isn’t he on his way?” Sam asked.

  “I think you and I both know that Roet is a clumsy fuck and needs to be chained to a desk in the library. I’ll let him know that he can debrief his assets. That’ll give him something to keep busy with.”

  “We are done interviewing them anyway. I doubt they’ll give him anything we don’t already have, but you never know. Maybe he’ll surprise us. I still have to watch the tape. I figured it was best to let Snow Forest sweet talk him. She said it went well. She’ doesn’t have any field experience in interrogation but I’ll let you know after I watch the footage on the plane.

  “Very good Sam. That is all. Call me when you have some options. I’ll organize your transport. It can’t be commercial of course. Go to the armoury. I’ll send a blank requisition form for you. Anything you need.”

  Xue Lin walked out into the morning sun, still unaware of the situation that had developed in Milan. Sam had decided to take twenty minutes to make a few calls and get things moving before taking the time to sit down with her to show her the video on his phone.

  The base was full of American soldiers, all looking relaxed. Xue Lin found a seat in the warm morning sunshine and waited for Sam to get back from his errands. She felt that the interviews had gone well, and was confident that both Dr. Wu and Jimmy would be a good fit in America if they made it through the induction process. She felt sorry for Dr. Wu, who would likely have quite a miserable life ahead of him. She felt that Sa
m’s softer account of Roet’s botched rescue attempt was a wise way to avoid Wu locking up on them in anger. She wondered how things would go with Wu when Roet arrived from Langley.

  Sam’s phone rang and he wrote down the details of the private jet that had been requisitioned for him and Xue Lin. They had an hour to get organized before wheels up. He figured it was time to sit down with her and give her the bad news.

  Sam found Xue Lin still sitting eyes closed in the sun. He thought it best to give it to her straight. Mentally, she was equipped to deal with stressful information, but this was closer to home than any scenario she had been faced with in her career.

  “It’s good to be warm again. They don’t have sunshine in Wuhan. They do have a nice blanket of smog going though.”

  “Xue Lin, we’ve had a development. It’s not good.”

  She sat up and Sam gave her the news, finishing with the video. She took it like a pro, saying only: “I’m going with you.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” Sam replied. “Wheels up in forty-five minutes. Bring your backpack with the vials, and your weapons. We’ll be able to land non-commercial but bring your Chinese passport anyway. If you get taken down, at least the Chinese will get blamed. Let’s go to the armoury. We may be going in heavy. To be determined. By the way, did you keep that submachine gun you stole from the lab?”

  Xue Lin smiled just for a split second as she walked briskly with Sam to the armoury. Sam exited the armoury fifteen minutes later with a long, black canvas bag, heavy looking, and a long gun slung over his shoulder.

  He told Xue Lin to check if the armoury had any suppressors that fit the pistols in her backpack.

  “They’re all Chinese. I doubt they’ll fit anything here.”

  “Just ask. When you are done here, go grab the Barret that I saw you put in your locker, and those pistols and that Chinese machine gun. Meet me outside the mess hall in fifteen minutes. We’re getting a ride to the plane in twenty.”

  “Roger that.”

  ‘Poor kid!’ Sam thought to himself, respecting the professionalism she was showing.

  *

  Roet’s plane had been in the air for several hours. He was angry that both his assets had left China. They were of much greater use to him back in China where they could be bribed and coerced into doing his bidding and keeping him informed. Maybe not so much Dr. Wu anymore since he had shot the girl in the neck, but definitely Jimmy. It was time to take all that money out of Jimmy’s US bank account and take it offshore and put it with the rest of his money. It seemed that the CIA executives up on the seventh floor were looking to retire him after the killing of Wu’s daughter and a series of other mistakes. He’d also had a call from an annoyingly obsessive CIA accountant concerning his massive over-spending the budget allowance for Jimmy and his other foreign assets and confidential informants. Roet had established US bank accounts under each of his informants’ names, setting himself up as a co-signatory. He could empty all of the accounts whenever it suited him, filtering all of the funds to a numbered account in Switzerland.

  It could soon be the right moment to pack up shop. He was getting tired of the game and he was well aware that he was drinking too much these days and it was affecting the way he was seen at work.

  In any case, he needed to get into a room with Dr. Wu soon and find out the whole story about his virus. Things had been left up in the air since the daughter’s death. He needed to find out if Wu had completed the work on altering the virus to be non-dangerous to white people.

  *

  Chapter 43

  In the Air

  The Gulfstream jet streaked into the sky towards Europe with Sam, Xue Lin and a big bag of guns aboard. Xue Lin had a poke through the bag to see what kind of toys Sam had collected. Nothing much out of the ordinary except for the pair of hand grenades which she picked up and weighed in her hands. Xue Lin needed to sleep much more than Sam did, and she lay down in the bed up near the front of the luxurious plane and went straight to sleep as soon as she put her head on the pillow.

  Sam’s phone had been buzzing with the receipt of files from the analysts at Langley. He read through the analysts’ reports on the video of the couple. They’d isolated and cleaned up background noise but still didn’t have a clue where they were being held. Other analysts were going through immigration footage from the last couple of days of flights from San Diego and LAX to Milan but it was going to take a while longer.

  Sam figured that he might make that phone call to the Chinese kidnappers a little early and try to ‘poke the bear’ and see if they made a mistake. Sam was getting frustrated. He needed to know where they were holding the couple if he was to stand a chance of getting the drop on them.

  Xue Lin awoke after more than three hours of deep sleep. Groggily she went to the back of the plane and made herself a cup of coffee as Sam continued to read reports from the analysts.

  Xue Lin had dreamt about the locator that Jimmy had dug out of her shoulder. It had clearly caused her some anxiety. “What an invasion of privacy!” she’d thought to herself.

  “Sam! I have an idea how we might find out where they are hiding my parents. The Chinese Government would most likely have put locator chips in them when they vaccinated the three of us during my adoption process back in ‘95.”

  “What?” asked Sam, quite incredulously.

  “Yeah, Jimmy dug my chip out when we were on the run. I couldn’t believe it either. Apparently they chip anyone they feel like. I guess my parents were ‘persons of interest’, so they did all of us and told them that it was a vaccination.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Sam, his sense of justice rearing its head.

  “Anyway…it occurred to me that perhaps Jimmy, being a Communist Government man might be able to help one of our CIA geeks hack into their database and find my parents on a map.”

  “Bit of a long shot Snowflake, but you might be right. Let’s get on it.”

  Sam and Xue Lin called Korea and arranged to have Jimmy put on the phone to discuss the idea. Jimmy wasn’t confident that he could get into the system, but they connected him to one of the CIA hackers at Langley and they all started working on it. Jimmy’s basic Government knowledge of the use of the chipping system helped the computer geek work out where to start looking for the database.

  *

  Milan

  The Barbecue couple were being guarded heavily by the six Chinese agents who were spread out in strategic positions, each member knowing that this was a high priority mission and that mistakes might mean the firing squad when they got home.

  The two prisoners looked like typical suburban Americans. Being in their mid-fifties they shouldn’t be much of a flight risk, but there was probably an American team in the planning stages of some kind of attack or a rescue. For the Chinese it was best if the situation did not escalate beyond a simple ‘swap.’ Two American CIA operatives for the three stolen vials, but they were prepared for a heavier scenario.

  *

  Sam looked out the window at the passing clouds below, feeling impatient and helpless as he waited for the geeks to find the GPS database. He opened the bag and checked and loaded all the weapons and double checked magazines. Then looking for something else to keep him occupied he remembered that he had to look over the footage of the interview with Dr. Wu so he could report back.

  “Hey, Snowflake, toss me that video camera. I have to watch that interview of the Doctor.”

  Xue Lin dug the camera out of her backpack and lobbed it over to him.

  Sam found the start of the interview and sat quietly watching Wu’s amicable exchange with Xue Lin recounting the Communist plot to intimidate it’s own population using the virus that he had made. Wu elaborated about the vaccine and the heavy metals in it that could interact with different radio frequencies. It was all surprisingly diabolical stuff. Xue Lin had done a pretty good interview for a rookie.

  Sam yelled “Nice job!” over at Xue Lin.

  Sam kept watchi
ng.

  Dr. Wu said: “Xue Lin, if your colleague Sam would like to come in and join us, I would be happy to speak freely with him. He seems to be a nice man, and I trust him.”

  “Great! I’ll go get him. He’s right outside.” Xue Lin got up from her seat, turned and banged on the inside of the door. The guard opened and Xue Lin left the room. Sam was about to shut off the camera, having seen everything that he had missed, but then Sam saw something happen that curdled his blood:

  The moment the door closed behind Xue Lin, Dr. Wu leaned forward and opened the case containing the virus. He extracted the vial opening it up. Then he sprinkled a small amount on the table and wiped it all over the surface of the table before resealing the vial and returning it to its case.

  “Shit Xue Lin! You need to see this!”

  Sam rewound to the moment Xue Lin left the room.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God I am so stupid!” Xue Lin yelled, as she watched what Wu did with the virus. I am so stupid. I can’t believe I left him alone with the virus! Oh Jesus.

  Sam! That means you are infected.”

  Sam thought for a moment about his own typical behavior in an interview: hands on the table, chewing a pencil, touching his lips, licking his finger to turn a page in his notebook...definitely infected.

  “What about you Xue Lin?”

  “I was given the antidote by Dr. Wu in the lab when we were about to escape.”

  Sam paused for a second: “We do have that antidote right here, you know?” Sam said a little too calmly.

  “Right. Right! Let’s get that into you. I can eyeball the dosage from memory. Do we have syringes on the plane?”

  “Probably. Go ask the co-pilot. Meanwhile I had better call this in. I have to retrace my steps and remember who I was in contact with.”

  “What about Roet?” Xue Lin asked.

  Sam looked at his watch. Shit, he might be there already. I’ll call him.”

  Roet’s phone went straight to voicemail. Sam left a message. Hopefully Roet would listen to it sooner than later. Maybe he hadn’t landed yet.